Several months before its European release, the GameCube landed on September 14, 2001 in the Land of the Rising Sun, and Nintendo is celebrating its happy anniversary today.
“Small, cubic and portable thanks to its handle... It's been 20 years since the Nintendo GameCube was released in Japan. It is in these few words that the Japanese firm reminds us of what will forever be the manufacturer's first console to abandon the cartridge format… long after the competition.
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A little over six years of existence
At a time when consoles and global releases were so to speak contradictory, Nintendo had logically first distributed its sixth generation console in Japan, so 20 years ago to the day on September 14. A few weeks later, on November 18, 2001, the North American market was supplied, but Europeans had to wait several more months.
On the Old Continent, Nintendo waited until May 3, 2002 to release its (or its, it's up to you) GameCube. Notice, for once, it was almost to our advantage, since just a few days before this European distribution, Nintendo had decided to lower (you read that right) the price of its console, which had gone from 250 to 200 euros .
Also, Europeans weren't the worst off with this release date. In Australia, the GameCube only arrived on May 17, 2002, and we had to wait until August 23, 2002 to see it land in Brazil… The end of production of the console was pronounced by Nintendo on the 30 November 2007, for a fairly short existence after all.
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Just over 20 million consoles sold
It must be said that this GameCube has not really arrived on conquered ground. Of course, Nintendo has always had a large community of fans ready to do anything to defend "their" company. It can also count on the very broad support of the Japanese public, but the competition will have been particularly tough at the start of the XNUMXst century.
We will not mention the case of the Dreamcast which, despite all the good will of SEGA, never managed to win. On the other hand, impossible to eclipse the arrival of a juggernaut on the market: Microsoft. Especially since its Xbox landed on March 14, 2002 in Europe, only a few weeks after an American release with great fanfare. Certainly, the console was much more expensive, but it took advantage of the formidable strike force of the United States.
The fact remains that THE competitor, THE steamroller of this generation is none other than Sony's PlayStation 2, and, inevitably, faced with this historic machine, the GameCube had all the trouble in the world to follow. It is also one of the home consoles with the least market in Nintendo's catalog: 21,74 million consoles and 208,57 million games sold. We are behind the 25 million Xbox and light years away from the 155 million PlayStation 2.
Ultimately, at Nintendo, only the Wii U did less well with its 14 million units sold, but we would almost speak of an industrial accident in this specific case.
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Excellent titles, but a difficult end of life
Like the Nintendo 64 a few years earlier, the GameCube is also sometimes perceived as the machine that has firmly anchored Nintendo in its habits of relying only on its strongest licenses to establish the success of its consoles. When it was released on November 14, 2001, the GameCube was therefore accompanied by Luigi's Mansion.
As of E3 2001, in addition to this Luigi's Mansion, other "mastodons" had thus been presented, among which we note in particular Super Smash Bros. Melee, but also the arrival of a new franchise, Pikmin. It will however have been necessary to wait another year for the heavyweights of the GameCube toy library to be talked about: games like Metroid Prime, Star Fox Adventures, Super Mario Sunshine or The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker have waited 'E3 2002 to get in the spotlight.
The GameCube will also stand out with titles as remarkable as Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II Rogue Leader from Factor 5, its version of Animal Crossing, the excellent Mario Kart: Double Dash or a few others like F-Zero GX, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Resident Evil 4, Super Monkey Ball and its sequel or The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, also released on Wii.
Still, for Nintendo, the failure is obvious. The GameCube did not sell as well as competing consoles and, logically, the games did not follow. Financially, if, at the time, Nintendo is doing even more than honorably, it owes it much more to the success of its Game Boy Advance than to the successes of the home console.
This difficult end of life should obviously not eclipse the hours spent on the various titles that we mentioned previously and which have a style and gameplay that do honor to a machine that we are, despite everything, not about to forget!
